Survivalist - 24 - Blood Assassins (2 page)

She was in love with John Rourke.

It was her fate that was in question. Would Admiral Hayes, who had been the first female commander of an attack submarine in the history of the United States Navy, act with compassion and forgiveness toward a disobedient officer? Or would she have Emma Shaw arrested, held for charges?

The thing which was a certainty was that John Rourke had sealed his own fate while successfully attempting to save the lives of everyone aboard Emma Shaw’s V-stol fighter bomber. John fought his third child, Martin, the adopted son of the Nazi leader Deitrich Zimmer, trying to prevent Martin’s energy pistol from discharging again and bringing down the aircraft. In the process—Paul had witnessed it with his own eyes—John was forced to strike his son across the jaw. And Martin fell back, out the open fuselage door, falling to his death in the volcanic eruption below.

When—if?—someday John’s wife, Sarah, was successfully returned to consciousness, she would learn that the son whom she had brought into this world— almost at the very moment she was shot in the head by Deitrich Zimmer—was killed by the hand of her husband, her child’s father.

Of all the Rourke Family, Paul Rubenstein knew Sarah the least well. He was married to the Rourkes’ only daughter, Annie. The Rourkes’ only surviving son, Michael, was, along with John, one of two men Paul Rubenstein counted as both brothers and best friends to him, albeit Michael was his brother-in-law and John was his father-in-law. And, of course, in the same way that he, Paul Rubenstein, was a member of the Rourke Family, so also was Natalia Anastasia Tiemerovna. Natalia, once in love with John, perhaps still in love with him, was Michael’s mistress, would one day be Michael’s wife.

Sarah lost Michael and Annie to adulthood when John manipulated the cryogenic chambers in order to age bis children into adulthood for the purpose of their survival, indeed perhaps the survival of the human race. As Paul understood it, John and Sarah’s marriage had been shaky Before the Night of the War. After she was awakened from cryogenic sleep and discovered that her two small children were adults, the Rourke marriage did not improve.

Then the baby. The child seemed like a blessing, Paul had always thought, as if somehow divine intervention had decreed that—in what was the first time John Rourke had made love to a woman since his last time with his wife Before the Night of the War—Sarah

should become pregnant.

Sarah was actually happy, enjoying her life after the War, assisting John with his hospital at Eden, readying herself to be an absurdly young grandmother someday (Paul and Annie had been seriously talking about having a baby then), waiting for her child to come so she could raise their child.

Then, all of that fell apart.

The hospital was attacked. Sarah delivered her son by herself in a hospital corridor. One of the Nazi commandoes, Deitrich Zimmer himself, shot her in the head. The bullet lodged inoperably deep within her brain. John was injured, comatose. The baby was kidnapped, for a time thought to be dead.

And so, John’s life was now destroyed. The one bargaining chip John Rourke had held which would have enabled him to coerce Deitrich Zimmer, perhaps the most brilliant surgeon who ever lived, to perform a life-saving operation on Sarah was destroyed. That bargaining chip was Martin, whom Zimmer had raised as his own son, trained to be his successor as Nazi leader. Sarah was doomed to cryogenic sleep, perhaps eternally. If, by some miracle Sarah could be revived, restored, the bullet removed from her brain without killing her or destroying her faculties, when she learned that John had caused Martin’s death (even though Martin had precipitated the circumstances leading to it), she would never forgive John.

John would be alone.

And, whatever happened, John Rourke lost.

That was unfair, wrong. John Rourke’s entire life was spent fighting for the survival of humankind. As his reward, happiness would forever be denied him.

Paul Rubenstein watched as Natalia lit a cigarette, wishing for the billionth time that he had not given up smoking Before the Night of the War, then pushing the image of smoking from his mind.

John began pacing again.

The door leading between Admiral Hayes’s office and the private conference room opened.

Emma Shaw stepped through, still wearing her flight suit, her helmet under her left arm. She ran the fingers of her right hand back through shoulder-length auburn hair that was losing its curl.

John stopped pacing. “Well?”

“The Admiral will enter a reprimand on my personnel file. If, within six months, there’s no similar incident, the reprimand will be removed,” Emma Shaw said, her voice low, without inflection.

A slap on the wrist, Paul thought. That was good.

“She pulled me off rescue duty for two days. Told me I needed the rest. I tried talking myself back up, but she wouldn’t go along with it.”

A massive rescue effort was going on now to evacuate the population of the island of Hawaii, because of the ongoing eruption.

“The admiral said there’d be plenty to do in two days. Even if the evacuation was completed, medical stuff and supplies and everything would have to be ferried out to the camps that are being set up. And Eden’s forces are still massing for what looks like an attack. Admiral Hayes said I’d get plenty of flying in then.”

“Rest,” John told her. “You need it. And thank you, from all of us, Emma.” John extended his right hand to her. She took it. They shook. She released his hand.

She glanced at all of them briefly. She left the room. John spoke again. “I think all of us need a rest. There’s a lot to be done. And I have to do some thinking, alone. All of you, I—” And John’s voice cracked as he rasped the words, “love you,” then stormed out of the room.

Emma Shaw heard the footsteps in the corridor behind her and turned around. She started to speak. John Rourke’s eyes streamed tears as he walked past her, not looking at her, saying nothing. “Ohh, God help him,” she whispered, closing her eyes.

Three

John Thomas Rourke stood on the summit of the mountain. When he looked to his left, he could see the ocean, limitless, the sun rising far off the windward coast. When he looked to his right, the darkness was not fading, the smoke and ash of Kilauea dominating the sky.

But the sunrise was beautiful, beyond his descriptive powers. He had never been a man of many words. Beauty and darkness would soon meet above him.

He felt almost evil, wasting ammunition, but he truly had plenty and weapons in the calibers he used were not in the strategic inventory of the Trans-Global Alliance. And, he had come here to do this at any event.

He drew one of the little Detonics CombatMaster .45’s from beneath his left armpit. He examined the gun closely. It was the one with his name on it, otherwise essentially identical to the gun beneath his right arm.

How often had he used this and its mate? How many lives had he taken in what he perceived as a good cause? And, for what?

His life was now nothing but ashes, like those at the tip of the thin, dark tobacco cigar he smoked, like the ashes spewing forth out of the volcano so far away, yet close. To have tried to sleep would have been an exercise in futility. He had killed his son, Martin, as surely as if he had shot him. And he had sealed his wife’s doom, because without Martin there was no way in which he could coerce Deitrich Zimmer to utilize his almost magical surgical procedures to save Sarah’s life. So, in one fateful instant, he had killed his son and effectively killed his wife.

And John Rourke had never felt loneliness more intensely in his entire life. Even Natalia was totally gone from him; she would be happier with Michael anyway.

This was a good place. A shot would never be heard, would disturb no one’s predawn sleep. John Rourke hefted the pistol in his right hand, then cocked the hammer as he took one last drag on his cigar…

It was Admiral Hayes’s voice on the telephone. “Yes, Admiral.”

“Mr. Rubenstein, I felt it best to speak with you concerning a very recent development. I’m afraid it’s too tragic to discuss over the telephone, and I’ll confess I don’t think I have the courage to tell either your wife or your brother-in-law, or, for that matter, Major Tiemerovna.”

“What is itr

“I’ll be waiting in my office.” The line clicked dead. Paul Rubenstein looked across the room. Annie lay on the couch, an afghan she had crocheted herself

covering her. She was sleeping, but mumbling incoherently, tossing her head every few seconds. Was she seeing something?

A shiver passed along Paul Rubenstein’s spine. He was tempted to wake her.

Instead, he scribbled a note on the pad beside the telephone and told her he was going out to speak with Admiral Hayes about something, would be back shortly. Where to place the note if she awakened? He set it on the coffee table, beside the couch, bent over his wife, touched his hps lightly to her forehead as he drew the afghan up closer around her.

She was seeing something, because her eyelids were fluttering and, once one returned from the Sleep, one did not dream. But Annie did, if she were in the empathic state. And that only came upon her, he knew from past experience, when someone she cared for deeply was in danger.

He went back to the telephone, took it off the table, walked about the room with it in his hand for a few seconds. Even if Michael and Natalia slept, he would wake them. He dialed their apartment at the BOQ. Natalia answered. “Yes?”

“Me, Natalia. You and Michael okay?”

“Tired. We cannot sleep. And you and Annie?”

“Fine.Same way. Where’s John?”

“Michael checked. John took a car from the base and drove up into the mountains. I think he wanted to be alone.”

“You guys get some rest,” Paul said, then hung up.

He stuffed his battered old Browning High Power into his trouser band and left the apartment, electing to walk the two blocks to Admiral Hayes’s office. It was

just past dawn, cool, damp, the air fresh and clear, his lungs still rehshing that, after the hell of the volcano.

What was it that Admiral Hayes could not relate over the telephone? Could not tell Annie or Michael? Paul Rubenstein quickened his pace. Something about John? His walk became a jogging run, one block down, another only to go. There were extra guards on duty near the Admiral’s headquarters complex, and as he narrowed the distance to the building to under a half-block, the guards nearest him already came to alert. “Relax. Paul Rubenstein to see Admiral Hayes.”

“Yes, sir!”

Paul jogged past the Marine who’d spoken and the other man standing guard with him. He reached the front door in another few seconds.

Paul slowed his pace as he entered the building, catching his breath. The combination of Admiral Hayes’s cryptic yet frightening telephone call and Annie’s obvious dream state ate at his nerves. What had happened that was so terrible that only he could be told, that was too terrible for a veteran line officer like Thelma Hayes to relate?

Paul Rubenstein could see Admiral Hayes now. She stood at the end of the corridor, waiting for him, her uniform jacket off, her sleeves rolled up, her hands lost in the pockets of her skirt. Behind her glasses, the muscles around her eyes seemed bunched, tight, her smallish mouth’s corners turned down.

Paul Rubenstein stopped walking. He stood a few feet from her. “What is it you couldn’t tell me over the telephone, Admiral?”

Her hands came out of her pockets, a lighter in one, a solitary cigarette in the other. She lit the cigarette, exhaling smoke through her nostrils as she said, “Some things cannot be said very easily, even less easily when you can’t see the face of the person you’re talking to, Mr. Rubenstein.”

“What happened?” There was a sick feeling in Paul Rubenstein’s stomach, a cold sweat in his palms.

“There has been a death,” she said, simply, quietly.

Paul Rubenstein felt the tendons in his neck go tight.

Four

She could not sleep. She didn’t try. Maybe she would run over to the other side of the island after a while. A friend of hers owned one of the larger cattle ranches there and would lend her a horse. A ride really wouldn’t help, but it was something to do.

Emma Shaw stood on the front porch of her little house, changed out of her flight suit into a loosely woven long-sleeved grey pullover sweater and a midcalf-length full skirt, rose colored—cotton, like the sweater—with deep side seam pockets, her hands buried in them. She wore no stockings and only wore flat sandals on her feet. And, she was a little cold. Wrapped about her shoulders was her one handicraft, the shawl she’d crocheted and practically hung under John Rourke’s nose in order to impress him with how domestic she could be.

It was just past dawn.

She’d washed her hair twice as many times as usual in order to get the volcanic ash and dust out, turned up the hot water between showers and soaked under it for

more than fifteen minutes, trying to get the stuff from the pores of her skin.

“Almost blew it this time, Emma,” she told herself. As she took her cigarettes and lighter from the porch railing, lit a cigarette, exhaled, she remembered what her portside engine air filter had looked like by the time she landed at Pearl. It was very much like a sandbox.

She’d flown back to Pearl Harbor on forty-percent engine power.

By the book, that wasn’t enough with her weight load. But she made it anyway, by the seat of her pants. And that was the best way to fly, even in this era of computers and autopilots and everything else.

If Admiral Hayes had brought her up on charges, if she’d been tossed out of the Navy, it would have been worth it. She started to cry now, just thinking about it. “I am stupid!” Emma Shaw said to the morning, to any wild creatures which might be listening, but most of all to herself. Women were stupid, she thought. Risk everything for a man she was nuts about who saw her as a war buddy. But, as she sniffed back her tears, she knew she would have done it again.

Emma Shaw was in love for the first and maybe the only time in her life. Two days from now, she’d be back in the air, and at any minute the forces of Eden and their Nazi allies would launch an attack against the United States and the rest of the Trans-Global Alliance. And, she’d be in aerial combat. And, maybe she would die. Takeoffs and landings from a carrier in rough seas were dangerous in and of themselves, not to mention other aircraft and ground batteries and everything.